Wednesday, April 16, 2014

You are probably here because you have been advised to consider reinstalling Firefox. You may, in fact, have uninstalled Firefox as a result of a recent campaign protesting either Brendan Eich’s being appointed CEO of Mozilla, or his supposedly being fired or forced by Mozilla to resign from that position as a result of a donation he made in favor of proposition 8. Brendan Eich did, in fact, resign; however, he did was not fired or forced to resign by Mozilla. Mozilla does not discriminate based on an individual’s personal political or religious beliefs. If you have been told otherwise, I encourage you to evaluate the evidence for yourself. First of all, I would like to point you to Mozilla’s official FAQ on Brendan’s resignation. I realize that some people will insist that this is just a cover story and that he was really forced to resign, in spite of whatever Mozilla may say to the contrary. So I would like to share some additional corroborating evidence. There are many inside sources who corroborate this, but the one I find particularly credible and compelling is Gervase Markham. He is in a unique position as an outspoken Christian and supporter of traditional marriage who works at Mozilla. Gerv has stated that he has it from sources he trusts that Brendan did step down of his own accord and was not forced out. You can read his full statement on his blog. Finally, I want to remind you of what Mozilla, and Firefox, truly stands for.

If you are still not convinced, I’d like you to consider one more thing. Consider for a moment, the possibility that Brendan really did step down of his own accord and is not interested in coming back. What more can Mozilla possibly do that would persuade you? Is there any further evidence that would change your mind? It makes sense to treat them with a good faith presumption of truthfulness unless and until there is evidence to the contrary. Why? Because if your mind can not be changed by anything, then they may as well ignore you anyway. There are always people who cannot be swayed by reason or any amount of evidence. Since their minds can’t be changed anyway, we all might as well ignore them and focus on those who can be persuaded by reason. If you are not open to any reasonable evidence, then you make yourself irrelevant to the debate. Don’t be do that. Evaluate the evidence fairly, and when in doubt, treat others with a good faith presumption of truthfulness. Then if evidence persuades you to change your position, it will mean something.

I read this. I read Markham's piece. I have evaluated the evidence and I am fully informed concerning the relevant facts. And my answer is a staunch and resounding no. I reject Mozilla. I reject what it now stands for.

I am aware Eich stepped down of his own accord. I am aware he was not fired, that his resignation was not demanded by the Mozilla Board, and that fewer than 10 Mozilla employees publicly demanded his resignation.

I am also aware that Mozilla's executive chairwoman Mitchell Baker issued this official statement on April 3rd: "Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves. We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast
enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry.
We must do better."

For what is she apologizing, precisely? To whom is she apologizing?

I am aware that Mozilla claims to "support equality for all." This is a blatant lie on multiple levels. Mozilla might as reasonably proclaim that it supports unicorns for all or a chicken in every pot. Mozilla clearly does not support the Constitutional right of free association or the right of free speech on the part of those harboring views it considers incompatible with its mission statement.

I am aware that "Mozilla Supports LGBT Equality". I don't and I will not support any organization that claims to do so.

I am aware that Mozilla has ignored tens of thousands of negative comments from current and former Firefox users and has refused to provide any statement in response to them. I am also aware that it responded quickly and publicly to a much smaller amount of criticism that threatened much less damage to the corporation.

A supporter of the move to ostracize and oust Brandon Eich declared: "I do think that any individual is free to choose to resign their own job
or otherwise not conduct business with someone whom they know has taken
an action that they consider unjust." I agree. That is precisely why I no longer want anything to do with Mozilla and I continue to recommend that everyone #uninstallfirefox.

Prior to the #uninstallfirefox campaign began, Mozilla Firefox represented 34 percent of the total pageviews here. That percentage is currently down to 20 percent, so based on last year's traffic, Mozilla can expect to lose at least 1,835,637 pageviews from the readers here on this site alone, in addition to the pageviews those readers generate on all other sites and whatever pageviews my household machines generate on an annual basis.

Consider the evidence: People at Firefox say it's not so. Damn. That's compelling. So compelling it requires a follow-up paragraph about how we're so unreasonable that we couldn't be convinced by evidence, anyway. For shame! Shun!

They elevated him to CEO knowing full well his Prop 8 contribution. He hadn't been in long enough to evaluate him on any CEO basis. Mozilla is more supportive of LGBT equality than its product because they dismissed the leader of the product over LGBT concerns. Mozilla is an inferior product. Why use it?

Yes, they took an unequivocal stand for the full homosexualist agenda and zero-tolerance for anyone not on board with every plank of it. It's too late for them to pretend anything else. It doesn't matter whether they fired Eich, pressured him to resign, or just made it clear that he'd be getting dirty looks behind his back for the rest of his tenure there. Hiding behind that technicality is just cowardly and completely misses the point.

The problem with the second paragraph is they didn't bother listening to what their users actually wanted in the first place, so they should be held accountable for their actions.

But he is right, having made the choice, they should now ignore those people who strongly believe in freedom of association. Because they burned the bridge to that market segment and should focus on growing their deviant user market share.

Here is what Mozilla must do in order to persuade me to reinstall Firefox:

1. Publicly apologize to Mr. Eich for creating a christophobic and intimidating work environment at Mozilla;

2. Publicly apologize for Mozilla's bigoted and intolerant attitudes toward those who hold the Christian faith and others who support the traditional definition of marriage;

3. Donate a large sum to a religious or political organization which works for the maintenance of the traditional definition of marriage and family.

"Is there any further evidence that would change your mind? It makes sense to treat them with a good faith presumption of truthfulness unless and until there is evidence to the contrary."

No, it doesn't. Mozilla turned on Eich because of his politics. Why should I trust the kind of corporation which has a culture of bigotry and hate?

"Why? Because if your mind can not be changed by anything, then they may as well ignore you anyway. There are always people who cannot be swayed by reason or any amount of evidence. Since their minds can’t be changed anyway, we all might as well ignore them and focus on those who can be persuaded by reason. If you are not open to any reasonable evidence, then you make yourself irrelevant to the debate."

No, you have made yourselves irrelevant to the debate -- by attacking and judging those of us who hold the six-millennia-old definition of marriage. By you own acts you have incurred the ultimate penalty that any commercial concern can bring upon itself: you have caused your own customers to stop using your products and services.

You may think we Christians and traditionalists are passive, weak, and powerless. You may think that sodomy and immortality are the wave of the future. You may think you can guilt us into reinstalling your software with an arch, high-handed message "welcoming" us back to the Firefox fold.

"Hiding behind that technicality is just cowardly and completely misses the point."

Its not cowardice, its mendacity. And they haven't missed the point at all, they're hoping some will buy that premise and then engage in a good faith effort to help them get the point. No dice - if they want good faith, they'll have to offer some of their own, along with contrition for the bad.

"We can balance the budget in 5 years""If you like your doctor you can keep it""Studies show that women ....""Studies show that children do best when ....""Global cooling, Global Warming, Climate Change, Climate Disruption...""Aids will effect us all""We have to build the dang fence!""Deficits do not matter""Diversity is our strength"

The amazing American attitude that defaulted to civic trust has been squandered. Regaining it will take generations. The words and pleadings of the "masters of this age" are not worth my time anymore.

The wiki lays everything out. Consider this man's bio against his firing.

Brendan Eich is an American technologist and creator of the JavaScript scripting language. He cofounded the Mozilla project, the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation, and served as the Mozilla Corporation's chief technical officer and briefly its chief executive officer.

He started work at Netscape Communications Corporation in April 1995. Hired originally to put Scheme "in the browser",[4] Eich instead created a new language, JavaScript for the Netscape Navigator Web browser. The first version was completed in ten days in order to accommodate the Navigator 2.0 Beta release schedule,[4][5] and was called Mocha, which was later renamed LiveScript in September 1995, then JavaScript in September 1995.

On March 24, 2014, Eich was promoted to CEO of Mozilla Corporation.[11] His appointment sparked controversy over a $1,000 political donation Eich had made in 2008 to the campaign for California Proposition 8, which sought to make same-sex marriage unconstitutional in California.[12] This revelation had previously been made two years prior, in March 2012, and provoked some criticism at the time in social media, particularly Twitter.[12] After his appointment to CEO, the controversy reemerged. In the ensuing public debate, some LGBT activists called for a boycott of the company.[13] A number of Mozilla employees asked him to step down, while others spoke out on their blogs in his favor.[14][15] Three of Mozilla Corporation's five directors resigned following Eich's appointment,[16][17] which the Mozilla Foundation attributed to "a variety of reasons. Two of the board members had been planning to leave for some time, one since January and one explicitly at the end of the CEO search, regardless of the person selected."[18] On April 3, 2014, Eich stepped down as CEO and resigned from working at Mozilla.[19][20] In his personal blog, Eich posted that "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader."

This reminds me a bit of the World Vision controversy which recently took place. World Vision actually issued an apology and a promise to return to Biblical values. While I believe the apology was sincere, the decision was made by the board and not just one man, so at least a majority of the board has strayed very far and at the least needs to recuse them temporarily realizing they have failed in leadership.

Saying "I'm sorry" is not accepting full responsibility for your actions, you then have to go on and make amends for the wrong doing to the best of your ability.

Why do creatures of the Left always insist on telling us that things we lived through did not happen?

Somebody brought up the "Al Gore Invented the Internet" thing, calling it a right wing lie. Now, it's always funny to be told things like that - assuming that everyone else is as dumb as them, with history starting this morning, except for slavery, that they remember, and somehow transfer to other groups of people to elide the definition of Civil Rights. Anyway, this person was astonished for me to tell him: Al Gore asserted he created the commercial Internet in a debate with Bill Bradley for the Democrat nomination; George W Bush, in his unique art with the language, switched created for invented; both of these happened in debates I watched. I was there!

Just like, with Firefox - I was there when Mozilla said that they were about inclusiveness in terms of LGBT and non-traditional marriage. I saw them bend over and tie themselves in knots over a small, vocal minority. I'm reminded that these were the same Mozillians who had, not two weeks earlier, threatened not to hire anyone for programming jobs if they disagreed with their opinions and called for creating a database of bad comments to screen out conservatives from working in Silicon Valley.

Not to sound too Bond-villainesque, but lots of us hope Mozilla Foundation dies as a moral lesson for others on the price of having betrayed the classic American civic ideal of keeping politics and business separate. The old rules worked until the Left decided to police employment based on opinion.

That whole quote came off as the biggest turd of whining I've seen in a while.It's also too late, now that I've had a chance to 'test drive' Pale Moon I can't see any good reason to switch back. There is nothing about Firefox that I miss.Bite me Mozilla.

That it is, but they know no other. They only higher authority they recognize is Political Correctness and its appointed guardians, and they've demonstrably had no difficulty prostrating themselves before those Gods. Infidels who recognize other competing values cannot but be lower.

Why? Because if your mind can not be changed by anything, then they may as well ignore you anyway.

It's no longer about them. It is about the next "Firefox". It is about the business community understanding that there are consequences to making boneheaded political statements in one direction or another. Some of those consequences are permanent, just as their own treatment of other people can have permanent consequences.

I know it seems odd, but perhaps Mozilla should have considered how Mr. Schmidt responded when asked about politics at Google. He said that he was sure that most Googlers, being young, single people, were pretty liberal. However, he said Google did not check people's politics, nor was he interested in playing that game. They should have listened to him.

Why do creatures of the Left always insist on telling us that things we lived through did not happen?

Because whether something is true or not is irrelevant to a leftist, so he assumes it is to everyone else too. All he's thinking is, "Will these words convince people to do what I want them to do?" He's not trying to convince you that his argument is true; that would involve facts and objective reality. He's trying to get you to FEEL like he's the good guy so you'll want to be on his side.

Mozilla can't hope to convince anyone who's paying attention that they're innocent on this. The facts are far too clear for that. But for all those who aren't really paying attention, there's a chance that enough obfuscation and happy-talk can make people FEEL like it's a reasonable organization after all and deserves another chance.

As I stated, with the appropriate Sad Face, at the Mozilla site after I had uninstalled Firefox and put in Pale Moon, Thank You, Mozilla for the impetus you gave me to go to Pale Moon. It is so much better than the base code, IE Firefox, that it was derived from' that I'm over whelmed with gratitude for the change. Go back? Not until it's really cold in the nether regions. Or, to put it in terms of a certain book I'm now reading, when the Dark Lands are blessed again with the gentle touch of a warm and bright sun and all the slow moving watchers devolve back into dust and the night hounds are again nice little doggies that fetch on command. Etc.

Their seats must be smarting right about now. I wonder how long it will take for them to go from 'up and coming' to 'down and out'. If they offered apology to Christians, donated to a pro-family organization, and offered Eich his job back with an apology and back wages then I would consider their plea.

Forgive me for sounding like a quaint old fogey, but I always assumed "Mitchell" was a male name. All the Mitchell's I knew growing up and after were boys and men. NONE were female.

I really shake my head at this culture we live in sometimes. Our white American females seem to have lost the common sense art of simply being female, almost as if they're ashamed and embarrassed of being feminine. Now they're taking on male names to hide behind, and prove to the world they're "just as good as men."

Thats how you know your over the target, when you start getting flack.

At some point in the distant future Mr. VoxDay will wonder was it worth it? Did I make a difference? Yes! I uninstalled after reading your blog, which I read everyday. Using Opera to write this. Put Pale Moon on my Win7 laptops. Pale Moon going forward. Thank you for bring all this to my attention.

> A supporter of the move to ostracize and oust Brandon Eich declared: "I do think that any individual is free to choose to resign their own job or otherwise not conduct business with someone whom they know has taken an action that they consider unjust.

I agree completely. And that's what the employees who didn't like Eich should have done. Quit. After all, they're such brilliant programmers they'll surely have other jobs within days, right?

Brendan Eich was the individual truly affected by Mozilla capitulating to OKCupid and the LGBT bullies; therefore, Mozilla's board of directors ought be apologizing to Eich, not us. The overwhelming backlash against Mozilla was in response to what was perceived as creeping fascism. Most people resent companies punishing employees for their political or religious beliefs, particularly when it's done in a hypocritical fashion, e.g. under the banner of celebrating diversity, equality or *insert double-speak*.

Mozilla underestimated the size and scope of the resistance to the LGBT bullies and paid a heavy price. Because we (dare to) believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman in holy matrimony, same as was held for thousands of years, we're chastised for being "bigots and haters." Give me a break. Nobody has a civil right to redefine marriage.

Firefox is run by a bunch of Spineless Gastropods! At least have the testicular fortitude to throw yourselves wholehearted in with the homofascists.

Marriage has never been, is not now, and will never be between two men or two women.

One cannot undo the Laws of Almighty God written into the fabric of Nature itself.

No government, no multinational corporation or company, nor any individual human being for that matter can do anything to change that definition.

They can delude themselves for a time, but then they, and those who follow them will eventually pass from this life to the next, as well as the man-made institutions that support their distorted view of marriage will pass into dust.

One can come up with every argument under the sun in favor of their wretched view of marriage.. You can beg that people follow that warped definition marriage. You can bribe people to follow that disgusting definition of marriage. You can hold guns to people's heads and make them follow that perverted definition of marriage.

Also, the installation of Pale Moon was worth it if only to introduce me to DuckDuckGo. It's a great search engine.

If you're using Firefox still, there's really no good reason not to install Pale Moon instead. If you're running Windows and concerned about compatibility with add-ons, install the 32-bit version of Pale Moon instead of the 64-bit. So far I haven't found a single problem with it (other than the recent Flash update, which can't be blamed on Pale Moon).

I will not change my mind on the hypocrisy demonstrated by the Mozilla mission statement vs their actions in response to this witch hunt. How can I trust such obvious liars not to include malware in their product?

In case anybody else had the same problem. I had problems installing it because their installer would always quit with no error message. I downloaded the zip version, put the folder in program files, made a shortcut and here I am.

I've uninstalled it now. Fascinating that he preaches to people to be reasonable but the stuff I'm hearing from these "activists", and the way big companies are happy to jump to their every moan and groan makes me feel quite the opposite. It seems to clear to me that anything less than being unreasonable would be poor form.

Isn't it a culture war where as Queen Oprah says that we need those old white men to die out? Suddenly in a matter of years, lack of enthusiasm for gay marriage is now anti-gay and hate speech supporting. I sense there is a tipping point coming with the "liberal progressive" movement, and that there are literally millions of people across Europe and US who while largely quiet about most of this, could at some point stand up to it.

My sense is most people are not especially ideological, and that as long as their families are ok they will largely be accepting of whatever nonsense leaders bang on about. If push comes to shove how many people in the UK really really believe that marriage is morally right? Seems more like they are not that interested, but at some point, particularly with immigration I suspect a backlash of sorts is on the cards.

Well, I read the webpage, even watched the linked Mozilla video about their "values": "Principle over profit." "Secrecy is trumped by honesty." Etc. etc.

What a bunch of weasel words. "Weasel words are likely to be used in advertising and in political statements, where encouraging the audience to develop a misleading impression of what was said can lead to advantages, at least in the short term (in the longer term, systematic deception is likely to be identified, with a loss of trust in the speaker)." [emphasis added] Well, they've lost me. I actually agree with a good deal of the sentiment expressed, as sentiment: I'd like to see everybody be kind, and tolerant, and so on. But my first allegiance is to the truth, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that truly nobody is more intolerant than those who scream loudest about tolerance. Nor less liable to subject themselves to the discipline of truth. Actually, they appear to be unable even to see what hypocrites they are.

Sure, okay, Brandon Eich left of his own accord. And, being kind of a softie himself (not exactly a hero for free speech, which is an extra complication in the situation), he's not joining the fray. Probably he's happy to be out of there, and I don't suppose he's really hurting financially. But it's obvious to me that he left because he found himself in a "hostile work environment". "A hostile work environment exists when an employee experiences workplace harassment and fears going to work because of the offensive, intimidating, or oppressive atmosphere generated by the harasser." And guess who came up with that concept, and turned it into a huge club with which many employers have been mercilessly bludgeoned, the "principle" of freedom of association by now pretty well assassinated? The same freedom of association which the "gays" claim as their "right"?

"We don't have a profit margin." What, they work for nothing? Last I heard, Mozilla was making a lot of money—a lot more than I do, anyway. Reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a therapist I've been going to for help with some serious health problems. I'd learned that she runs Ubuntu Linux on her laptop (she knows little about it, but her "partner"—not husband, apparently—is some kind of computer expert); I've been a Mac user (and sometime support consultant) for over 25 years, but recently getting increasingly sick of Apple's arrogance, and becoming interested in Open Source. She said something about how Linux—and Ubuntu—is not tainted by "capitalism", etc. And I said, Well, they don't work for free: the only reason they can give away the Ubuntu OS to individual users is because they make (apparently a lot of) money selling support to big users, servers, etc. And I thought (but didn't say, not being up for the problems that would ensue), Well, I note that you don't work for nothing, given that I'm paying you handsomely for your services. If you'd rather not be a "capitalist", I'd be happy to oblige.

This whole business is simply a perfect example of what will happen when some extraneous agenda is elevated above the "principle" of making the best product possible. Truth is, Firefox was already beginning to lose market share because people were beginning to notice it wasn't keeping up. Now it's become obvious why: too much baggage, reflected in the software becoming bloatware. I'm all for running a business on high principles (and will patronize such a business by choice, if their product is also among the best), but if you spend more time congratulating yourself than doing the work, you're likely to have fallen into a serious state of denial.

Mozilla clearly does not support the Constitutional right of free association or the right of free speech on the part of those harboring views it considers incompatible with its mission statement.

In what way is their dismissal (for any cause or no cause at all) of Eich a violation of free association? Eich has no inherent right to work for Mozilla. He is there entirely at Mozilla's pleasure. Mozilla's exercise of THEIR right of free association is entirely in keeping with the right of "free association" claimed today - in fact moreso than usual. And Mozilla's dismissal of Eich in no way violates his right to free speech. Eich's dismissal leaves him free to proclaim whatever he pleases whenever he pleases in whatever way he pleases. Mozilla's action is entirely in keeping with every libertarian perspective.

Speaking of Open Source (of which Mozilla is, after all, one of the flagship examples), the recent revelation that the Linux kernel is built and maintained almost entirely by "volunteers" from a major defense contractor (if this guy isn't lying; I'm not expert enough to tell myself, but given the flak he'll be taking it seems unlikely)… well, I can only say it's taken a lot of the bloom off the rose. Apparently this article is not going as viral as it should, mostly because the overwhelming majority of "volunteers" in the Linux/OS world simply can't deal with it and so cover their ears. Sound familiar?

Violation is your word, civil servant, your quote does not include it. The argument is not that Mozilla broke the law and we do not wish to associate with criminals; the argument is that we find Mozilla morally and ethically repugnant and do not wish to associate with them any further.

And I'll note that *I'm* not the one asking Firefox to take me back. Mozilla is welcome to make whatever decisions they want: I for one think they should be allowed to state without any legal ramifications, "we wanted Eich out cause he upset the gays." But they have to own their decisions, so tough to them.

In what way is their dismissal (for any cause or no cause at all) of Eich a violation of free association? Eich has no inherent right to work for Mozilla.

Sure, sure, Mozilla has a perfect right to fire anyone for any reason. I think the EEOC is a bunch of crap myself. But they don't have to fire anyone either. It's a choice.

It' is, or used to be anyway, a tradition that people were free to disagree on politics and still remain fully accepted members of society. You had to go really far afield to have your politics excuse you from polite company, and supporting a conservative proposal that got over 50% of the vote in a liberal state doesn't qualify.

Mozilla didn't violate his rights. They violated our social norms. That's what they're getting raked over the coals for.

"Because if your mind can not be changed by anything, then they may as well ignore you anyway."

Mozilla, please ignore me.

If you don't validate me, I'm going to ignore you! I'm serious, I'm going to ignore you. Here I am, ignorining you... How do you like it, huh? Wait! You can't just walk away from me while I'm ignoring you!!!!

Why would someone put together what seems like a fantastic operating system... and then just give it away?

Oh.

Bwahahhhahahah! I have always found it damned amusing that so many self-proclaimed libertarians - who if they don't understand anything else ought to understand TANSTAAFL - are such big Open Source proponents.

After reading VD's initial post on this subject I also made the switch and downloaded Pale Moon 64bit version and I couldn't be happier. It seems like the only thing I gave up was a slower, clunkier 32bit browser for a faster 64bit browser that runs native on my machine.

I'm happy that I "mooned" Mozilla by switching to Pale Moon. I know...very punny.

I'm hoping that the folks at Pale Moon don't go and do something equally stupid. It would be hard to switch to Explorer or Chrome. Their so slooooow it would be a real sacrifice. Although it's strange that I can't seem to post comments here with anything but Internet Explorer. Oh well, I guess it's good for something.

The Ubuntu situation isn't as clear-cut as that. Ubuntu is basically flashiness and user-friendliness built over Debian. Now, the Debian developers are true ideologues. However, Ubuntu developers are capitalists. They take what's out there for free, and put it in a prettier package, and make money off it. Also, Ubuntu has already been caught sending all the searches you do, even locally from your computer, out there in the internet.

I think Ubuntu is so well-financed by, for example, George Soros, because it's so hard to control the Debian project. But it is easy to make it prettier, and to make it natively support proprietary formats like flash and mp3, and put the evil in THAT package.

civilservant - Whether you believe the following or not try this as an experiement regarding your statement above. Please speak to your coworkers about how a marriage is between one man and one woman. Be sure to mention how homosexuality was a mental disorder before 1973 and you think it should still be one.

What? You cannot do that because you would be fired, counseled, lose positions and opportunity. You'll still lie and say it doesn't limit your speech. Why? Because you have nothing but lies to offer.

I am sure that people who have lost jobs or have been prosecuted because their beliefs are not afforded special consideration under the law will appreciate your 'nuanced' and fair words.

Of course Eich resigned, on his own accord, just completely coincidentally as he was being purged. That's what always happens. From the Moscow Show Trials to Torquemada, those who are caught in the web of witch hunts just about always confess. Of course they're guilty. Of course it's all their fault. Of course they deserve no mercy. Just ask them.

-Liberals throw a hissy fit-Time passes-Eich resigns-Mozilla immediately apologizes for said, passed time, and acts like it's ok now, and that allowing said passed time was a violation of their principles

Well, SURE I'll believe that Eich just happened to resign, and you tried to get him to stay!

So, civilServant, you would then agree that when Hollywood producers refused to do business with certain actors, directors, and screenwriters on the non-binding recommendations of Sen. McCarthy and HUAC, that there was no violation of freedom of speech or association there, correct? Because, of course, there is no inherent right to write Hollywood screenplays, or to direct or star in movies, is there?

Philalethes, I've never been a big fan of Red Hat either, and it seems like every time a Linux distribution gets dominant, it declines in quality. But that article doesn't really say much and is also misleading. The distros used to have weak security because distributing good security to outside the US was illegal. It wasn't about anyone being in anyone's pocket; it was the law, and the distros all explained why they couldn't include the good stuff.

The claim was that if people in other countries got their hands on the best encryption, terrorists would use it and be safe. (This was before 9/11, but terrorists were already being used as an excuse.) Of course, the reality was that the rest of the world already had it anyway -- you can't put source code online and expect it to stop at national borders -- and American users who wanted strong encryption usually ended up downloading it from overseas. So the whole thing was stupid, and eventually even the government realized that and dropped the export restrictions.

He also seems to switch back and forth between Red Hat/Debian/Linux as if they're basically the same thing, which they aren't, so it's hard to tell who's being accused of what. But if anyone's worried about it, just do as I do and use FreeBSD. The B stands for Berkeley, so you know it's 100% hippie-approved!

Jack Amok April 16, 2014 12:33 PMWhy would someone put together what seems like a fantastic operating system... and then just give it away?

Oh.

Bwahahhhahahah! I have always found it damned amusing that so many self-proclaimed libertarians - who if they don't understand anything else ought to understand TANSTAAFL - are such big Open Source proponents.

But the fact is still that the source is open. I have compiled my own Linux kernel. I have also compiled my own FreeBSD kernel many times.

With open source, in spite of any insidious influence by conspirators, the game is fixed so that no one entity can wrap it up and own it without alerting lots of people. You would be surprised at how many places open source contributors come from. Often times completely out of the blue. Back in '04 I ran into a young guy working for a local IT company (a clueless IT company) who just happened to rewrite the LInux kernel filesystem scheduler (I checked and verified).

But I don't understand why some claim that they uninstalled firefox and installed Chrome.

Personally I use Pale Moon, with compatibility mode off. However, I would prefer a move to Chrome over continuing to use Firefox. And this is because we want to make a warning example of Mozilla, so that other companies won't do this in the future.

It is best to run in the right direction, but even if you run to the wrong one, you are still providing a signal. It still hurts Mozilla as much. And the primary objective is that we kill Mozilla, for future's sake.

A&E caved. World Vision caved. Both repented in dust and ashes. Fine. But we still don't have an example of what happens when you don't.

You would be surprised at how many places open source contributors come from.

After almost 20 years, open-source continues to amaze me. Not so much the big, famous projects like web browsers or distros -- you could say people do those for the fame, or hoping to develop them into something profitable. But take something completely unglamorous like the Perl module Date::Calc: thousands of lines of Perl and C code, all so that programmers can find things like a particular date's day of the week with a single function call, without fiddling with timezones and leap years and all that themselves. And not one in a thousand of the people who ever use it will know the name of the guy(s) who wrote it. There are millions of bits and pieces like that out there, all created A) just for the heck of it, or B) to give something back.

Mozilla is going to have a seriously hard time recovering from this one, if at all. One of their primary mistakes being that they misjudged the trajectory of the PC cannonball. It has reached its apex and is on the way down. Too many younger people have had enough of the B.S.

That's one reason I wonder what's going to happen if Gates and Zuckerberg et. al. get their way and manage to turn programming into a factory job where a guy comes home exhausted after working hard all day just to keep the bills paid. Most people have no clue how much of the software they use (including most of what runs their favorite web sites) exists because a lot of young guys were working at jobs that paid well (or were in college preparing for those jobs) and had the free time and energy for other projects.

It is sad that so many aspects of the human experience (and so much of the business and entertainment world) now have to be evaluated based upon how they reflect on anal intercourse. Things that one would think have nothing to do with homosexual anal sex- the Boy Scouts for instance- are now forced by the homosexual lobby to publicly comment on this issue.

Nope. I wouldn't even describe my feelings towards Mozilla as hate. The Gay Mafia I hate; Mozilla is just something that needs to go down in order to get at them. It is merely a cowardly ally that chose the side it thought stronger.

Noah B. (et al.), please do also read the same blogger's background post, "Biography of a Cypherpunk, and How Cryptography Affects Your Life", which goes into more detail. Also, I found the comments on both posts worth reading, though they are long. As I said, I don't know enough to evaluate the totality of his statements, but if even part of it is true, as I said, it takes a lot of the bloom off:

For me the biggest was the fact that the US military is Red Hat’s largest customer:

“When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source,” General Justice continued. “It may come as a surprise to many of you, but the U.S. Army is ‘the’ single largest install base for Red Hat Linux. I’m their largest customer.” (2008)

This is pretty much what I had figured. I’m not exactly new to this, and I figured that in some way the military-industrial/corporate/intelligence complex was in control of Red Hat and Linux, and was devolving it into a useless, compromised toy.

Jack Amok: Well, I do understand TANSTAAFL (started reading Heinlein ca. 1955 at age 12), and don't believe in rainbow-tailed unicorns (read The Naked Ape when it was new), so always kind of wondered about the more starry-eyed elements of the Open Source movement.

For instance, besides Mozilla and Linux, the third great exemplar of OS is OpenOffice (which personally I've found impossible to use; but then I'm a Mac guy): when I started learning about it I wondered how it was funded (obviously a lot of work goes into it, and TANSTAAFL), then noticed it was hosted by Sun, who also apparently offered a pay version for corporate customers; to believe that Sun never exerted any influence on its development would be hopelessly naïve. And then OO was acquired along with Sun by Oracle, and, knowing even a little about Larry Ellison, I figured trouble would ensue… and lo, it did. And now, of course, there's a big split between OO and LO, and all the egos can't seem to get together and work it out.

I believe it is possible to pursue the ideals of openness and generosity (Dāna in Buddhism is the first of the Perfections to be cultivated) without being an idiot; unfortunately, not many seem to know how to do this, so we have this (false, to my mind) conflict between generosity vs. hard-headed realism.

Anthony April 16, 2014 2:55 PMBrendan Eich has spoken, a little, on the subject, and it's clear that he was left twisting in the wind by the Board:

Whoa. That's the first time I've seen a little spleen from him.

Again you write things you don’t know or can’t attest to, which sound like hype: “Brendan is still very much an active part of the Mozilla Project in a key position.” My best advice is to refrain from doing anything like that!

Markku: Well, I've been sort of following Ubuntu and Linux etc. for several years, but haven't really used any of it, and don't know a lot about it. I'm willing to accept that Mark Shuttleworth was/is acting out of clean motivation, but of course he's not the only person in Ubuntu now. (And a few years ago he showed a rather arrogant side, apparently having decided that the best way to accomplish his stated aim of competing with Apple rather than Microsoft was to emulate Steve Jobs's management style).

Is Ubuntu really "well-financed by … George Soros"? I hadn't heard about that. Yeah, Debian does seem pretty idealistic; but there seems to be general agreement as to its quality (since I gather more other distros are based on it than on any other). However, Debian in turn is based on the Linux kernel, as is every Linux derivation; to learn how that has been compromised was a bit of a shock. Does Linus Torvalds personally check every line of code contributed to the kernel? Would he necessarily recognize a skillfully-done "back door"? And who funds Linus Torvalds? Does anyone know (besides Linus)?

Also, Ubuntu has already been caught sending all the searches you do, even locally from your computer, out there in the internet. Well, I hadn't heard that, though I'm not surprised. Also, the fact that the CEO is female—so politically correct—doesn't charm me. I note that all the seven other members of the "management team" are men; I wonder who does the actual work?

cailcorishev: Well, again, the author goes into more detail about security etc. in his background post, linked above. And I'm not expert enough to understand much of it anyway, but, again, if the Linux kernel has been compromised from the very beginning, by the very people who've been entrusted with building it, there's not a lot of point in arguing over distros. As for BSD, well, actually I'm already using it, since Mac OS X is built on BSD :). There does seem to be a consensus in these articles that BSD might be preferable to Linux, but who knows? It was built at one of the biggest gummint-run universities, after all. And my interest has been in an alternative to Apple and Microsoft that might actually gain some traction in the world at large; that's why I keep coming back to Ubuntu, despite its various drawbacks. And it does look good.

rycamor: With open source, in spite of any insidious influence by conspirators, the game is fixed so that no one entity can wrap it up and own it without alerting lots of people. According to this writer, it seems that is just what has happened. Not that it couldn't be corrected, though I'd guess it'd be pretty hard to go into the Linux kernel and find (all?) the built-in "back doors". Anyway, that's what this writer seems to want to do: build an open-source OS that is not so compromised. But TANSTAAFL: who's going to do it? Especially when the open-source "community" won't even admit there's a problem?

James Dixon: And if you don't trust Red Hat, Ubuntu, or Debian; there's always Slackware. Which is also built on the Linux kernel, which, according to this writer, has been compromised from the beginning by its programmers, "volunteers" who just happen to work for a defense contractor. I guess that's the part of these articles that most got to me.

> Which is also built on the Linux kernel, which, according to this writer, has been compromised from the beginning by its programmers, "volunteers" who just happen to work for a defense contractor....

The source code is readily available. Download it and check it our yourself. Or get someone you trust to do it if you're not capable of doing so.

I don't remember where I heard about Soros funding Ubuntu, but I remember paying attention to it because it was not a tinfoil hat source. Rather, the spirit was, look what a philantrope Soros is, funding Ubuntu.

However, here is Richard Stallman's advise to not use Ubuntu, and to advise others to not use it either. Now, for those who don't know, Stallman is much more responsible for the operating system that we currently call Linux, and that should actually be called "GNU/Linux", than Linus Torvalds is. It's sort of an accident of history that it carries Linus's name, rather than that of Stallman's foundation.

It's mainly because there are many kernels, but the GNU part is irreplaceable. So, we refer to the operating system with the "variable" part, even though it is the smaller effort.

Probably not. Mark Shuttleworth bankrolls Canonical, which is the company behind Ubuntu.

> And who funds Linus Torvalds? Does anyone know (besides Linus)?

Linus is funded by the Linux Foundation so he can work on the kernel full time, per Wikipedia.

> Not that it couldn't be corrected, though I'd guess it'd be pretty hard to go into the Linux kernel and find (all?) the built-in "back doors".

Not really. It'd take a while, and you'd need a full team to review everything, but it'd be simple enough to do.

> ...then noticed it was hosted by Sun, who also apparently offered a pay version for corporate customers.

What became OpenOffice was originally released by a European company as Staroffice. Sun bought that company when they were flush with money during the dot come boom. They open sourced the majority of the code in their later years and released it as OpenOffice. The fork of LibreOffice was, IMO, largely due to three factors: A well founded general mistrust of Oracle, an inability to work with Oracle, and IBM's need of a version they could continue to use as the base for their Symphony product.

Sure, he wasn't forced out. The board went to his house, sat him down at his kitchen table, bottle of vodka (cheap vodka I'm sure), put the Glock on the table, started talking about, "doing the right thing"... sure, he wasn't forced out.

> Not that it couldn't be corrected, though I'd guess it'd be pretty hard to go into the Linux kernel and find (all?) the built-in "back doors".

Not really. It'd take a while, and you'd need a full team to review everything, but it'd be simple enough to do.

An excellent idea, for some liberty-minded geeks to band together and tackle.

I suggest a corollary: take a stripped-down, well-checked *nix kernel, put it on one of the open source motherboards and make a personal firewall that can live just downstream of your ISP connection to monitor for packets going to suspicious locations.

if even part of it is true, as I said, it takes a lot of the bloom off

Maybe the difference is there was never much bloom for me. I know open source is an ideology for some people, but for me it's just a way to produce good software that competes well with commercial products, while giving people the chance to keep an eye on the guts of it and make sure it does what it says on the tin. It's not a religion.

“When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source,” General Justice continued. “It may come as a surprise to many of you, but the U.S. Army is ‘the’ single largest install base for Red Hat Linux. I’m their largest customer.” (2008)

This is pretty much what I had figured. I’m not exactly new to this, and I figured that in some way the military-industrial/corporate/intelligence complex was in control of Red Hat and Linux, and was devolving it into a useless, compromised toy.

The one doesn't follow from the other. If you invent a better hammer, and the army comes along and orders ten times more than you've produced so far, does that "compromise" your design?

Like I said, I've never been much of a RedHat fan. Started on Slackware, compiling everything from source, and never really liked RPM (it's gotten better, but was pretty rough back then). But if the military reworked RedHat in their own image, well, there have been dozens of other distros to choose from over the years. And anything they contributed to the kernel would have been open source too.

if the Linux kernel has been compromised from the very beginning, by the very people who've been entrusted with building it,

In "the very beginning," Linux was a hobby for a Finnish college student who wanted a small-scale Unix to play with that wasn't hampered by the licensing issues that were a problem with BSD and MINIX and was tired of waiting for GNU's. I don't think US government snoops were involved, though I did know one early Linux user who claimed to have worked for the NSA (he claimed a lot of things). If they had been, anything they would have inserted way back then, even if it hadn't been noticed by all the other hackers working on it, would have been replaced long ago in ordinary updating and refactoring.

Really, I think it's smart for people to be paranoid, but the source code for this stuff is out there and a lot of paranoid people work on it. If that's not enough assurance for you, I don't know what could be. What's the alternative: use a closed-source OS and take a corporation's word for it about what's in there? No thanks.

The source code is readily available. Download it and check it our yourself.

Well, whaddaya know, I don't know how to do that; I happen to be one of the few non-low-level programmers in the world. And, frankly, the ubiquity of that sort of response is what makes me think sometimes that the computer industry is run/populated by adolescents, regardless of chronological age.

Or get someone you trust to do it if you're not capable of doing so.

Nor do I know anyone who could. All I can do is work with the information I get, at my admittedly low level of intelligence. And the author of the articles I've linked does seem like one who is skilled in this subject, and he says there are deliberately-created flaws in the code. It's not just about Ubuntu collecting users' searches, it's about the core of the OS. Maybe he's a liar, or an idiot; but I find his reasoning all too plausible. Nor do I recall seeing any responses on his blogs that questioned or refuted his entire thesis. And apparently Julian Assange agrees, for what that's worth.

Open source runs on volunteer effort, but who vets the "volunteers"—or their work? Who could, if the volunteers are more skilled than anyone who could check them?

Mark Shuttleworth bankrolls Canonical, which is the company behind Ubuntu.

My understanding is that he did initially, but it's now self-supporting. But there's no way of knowing, really.

Linus is funded by the Linux Foundation so he can work on the kernel full time, per Wikipedia.

And who funds the Linux Foundation? Really? No way of knowing. The Evil One is endlessly resourceful; that's es job, and e's been doing it a long time.

Not really. It'd take a while, and you'd need a full team to review everything, but it'd be simple enough to do.

Quis custodiet?

The fork of LibreOffice was, IMO, largely due to three factors:

I'm actually rather sympathetic to the LO people, but they seem to be such Prima Donnas. My impression only (not having followed it closely), but I got the feeling that a little more patience on their part and they could have had OO and not had to fork it, thus creating even more confusion in the OS world. A friend uses OO (on a Mac); I thought of suggesting that he switch to LO, but realized it would just confuse him. Myself, I find Apple's Pages a lot easier to use, but of course its native format nobody else can read.

However, here is Richard Stallman's advise to not use Ubuntu, and to advise others to not use it either.

Interesting, thanks for the link. I note his March addendum, that Ubuntu hasn't stopped their spying, but he hopes for better news in time. Not yet, apparently. And for the clarification of GNU's relation to Linux; I guess I knew this, but had forgotten. Stallman seems like a bit of an oddity himself—his insistence that everything ought to be "free" sounds like he believes there is a free lunch, and he's entitled to it—but I guess his heart is in the right place. Don't I sound like a liberal, now?

This seems to be a time for people to learn that those they've trusted are not actually trustworthy. I went through it with my Zen teacher thirty years ago; many Catholics are facing it now with their local priests; a couple years ago my favorite manufacturer of naturally-sourced, organic supplements sold itself to Procter & Gamble.

I guess I had the idea that the Open Source software movement was, if not perfectly pure, at least a whole lot cleaner than Microsoft (!) and Apple. Disabused again. I don't have the skills to create my own OS out of source code, and even if I did, I'd be alone in the world, no longer part of a community. I made my living for 15 years as a Mac support consultant, and am thinking of getting back into that work as my health improves; could hardly do that with any Open Source OS except possibly Ubuntu, and the more I learn about it the less enthusiasm I feel.

I'm not asking for a solution, really; I don't think there is one. Ecclesiastes was right; so was the Buddha. This world is the Devil's playground, always has been, always will be. In the end, for me this has just been another lesson: Don't look for a solution in the problem basket.

Nevertheless, I don't expect to stop using computers, or the 'Net. Only to keep in mind the above. Meanwhile, after 25 years I'm pretty used to the Mac OS; I guess I'll be staying with it, given that there's not an alternative that's enough better to be worth the sizable effort involved in switching (for instance, I work pretty fast, with a lot of keyboard commands that would be different in another OS, not to mention different applications to learn).

Open source runs on volunteer effort, but who vets the "volunteers"—or their work? Who could, if the volunteers are more skilled than anyone who could check them?

Ideally, they vet each other. Like I said, a lot of paranoid people work on open-source projects. Yes, in theory, the NSA or the military could hire a bunch of coders to infiltrate a project and squeeze the others out, but then the others would fork it or take their skills to a competitor. And as long as the project stayed open, they'd still have to obfuscate everything because they don't know how many people out there might look through the code and spot something.

And who funds the Linux Foundation? Really? No way of knowing.

If you only recognize two levels of trust -- zero, or things you can check with your own eyes and hands -- then yes, I suppose you can toss "no way of knowing" at any claim any person or group of people makes. In that case, yes, you might as well keep using a closed-source OS that comes from a company where the employees voted for the current leftist ruling power at a 95% clip. No way of knowing it's not just as safe as anything else, I guess.

Oracle gave OpenOffice to Apache precisely because LibreOffice made it practically impossible for them to make money off it. However, currently OpenOffice is perfectly kosher, as an Apache Incubator project.

Well, again I haven't followed it closely, so this is just my impression, but what I meant was that if the people who went off in a huff to start LO had not done so, perhaps in time it could have been worked out, i.e. they could have gotten OO rather than having to fork it. Of course, dealing with Ellison couldn't have been easy, but the present result is kind of a mess, with two competing nearly-identical Open Source projects. A computer expert may be able to tell the real differences between them, but for the average user it's just confusion. Except that the LO people have managed to grab the mantle of "true" Open Source (I note that it seems to be the default for most Linux distros); but if Apache projects are also Open Source, then that would be a distinction that is more a matter of the same kind of touchy-feely crap exemplified by the Mozilla video linked on the "reinstall Firefox" page. Which turns me off, and I don't want to support it. So is OO the better project? Otoh, the LO people claim to be working harder and making more improvements. So is LO the better project? Is OpenOffice a dead name, due to fade away in the past? So why are Apache wasting their time? From the perspective of an outside observer, potential user: Why can't they all work together? Confusion.

Yes, they should now work together to merge the projects. I, for one, am an OpenOffice user. That inability to work together NOW is on them. But to initially force Oracle's hand, that was the right thing to do from the LibreOffice crowd.

> ... but what I meant was that if the people who went off in a huff to start LO had not done so, perhaps in time it could have been worked out, i.e. they could have gotten OO rather than having to fork it.

That wasn't going to happen. Oracle gave up OO because of LO. They wouldn't have done so if LO hadn't existed, and probably would eventually have closed or abandoned it.

Yes, in theory, the NSA or the military could hire a bunch of coders to infiltrate a project and squeeze the others out, but then the others would fork it or take their skills to a competitor.Well, I don't have time now to reread "IgnorantGuru"s essays, but as I recall that was just his point: that Linux kernel development has been infiltrated, but apparently nobody's noticed—either because nobody but the infiltrators is skilled enough to see it, or because people can't deal with the possibility that their "religion" has been compromised at that level, so simply won't see it. Or some other variant of "too much invested to change course now". Anyway, it hasn't been "forked" at that level. Maybe he's wrong, I dunno. I hadn't thought of this possible scenario until he laid it out, but it seems at least plausible to me.

As for using a closed-source OS that comes from a company where the employees voted for the current leftist ruling power at a 95% clip, yeah, I don't like that either (I've been a Ron Paul guy since 1981, though I haven't voted since 1988), but Apple's hardly alone in that respect in the computer industry, including Open Source. The very subject of this thread is an example. Perhaps the enemy I know is preferable to the "friend" I don't.

Btw, thanks everyone for a thoughtful and enlightening discussion, even if it is perhaps somewhat OT. Forked, I guess.

"Markku - Do you find OpenOffice as good as the microsoft stuff or are there other reasons for using it?"

I'm not Markku and I don't have his technical skill, but I find OO to be about 95% as good as Microsoft Office. Every now and then there'll be something that I can't do as easily as I could in Office (most recently it was removing hyperlinks from text I had pasted into a spreadsheet) but overall it works just fine.

OTOH, my wife (who is very resistant to even the smallest changes) hates it and wants Microsoft. Since I can get it from my job for $10, I will but I'll probably continue to use OO myself.

I'd been looking for a fix to the flash problem with Firefox for some time, so this happening was a timely one for me. I switched over to Pale Moon almost immediately. It still has the flash issue, but it seems to happen less often, and it's a slightly faster run. It does seem to have an issue with reading PDFs in the browser, but I'll give it time to get that worked out. I've still got Thunderbird for my email, but that's only while I look for something better (I'm surprised at how bad the alternatives are). My workaround here has been to simply go straight to my emails instead of using Thunderbird, so I'm essentially back in the days of AOL/Compuserve/Prodigy, if you know what I mean.

If Mozilla wants me back, the way is easy and open:

1.) Fire those who called for Eich's head.

2.) Fire those higher ups who didn't immediately defend Eich

3.) Publicly apologize to Eich for the failure to immediately back him in making his personal, private choice. If firing is too harsh, they can be 'allowed' to resign.

4.) Publicly renounce support for gay marriage, with a declaration of neutrality on such issues moving forward

5.) Issue a statement saying that they will completely eschew all non-company related politics moving forward, and that nobody will be fired, or pressured to leave, because of their politics in the future.

Would you please, PLEASE, edit the code that generates your mobile webpage (iPhone) so I can click on a link in the comments, view the linked material, click the "back" button and return to the comment containing the link?

As it is, I return to the comment and I am INSTANTLY scrolled to the very uttermost bottom of ALL the comments.

Do you realize just how tedious it is to scroll up, up, up, over and over, just trying to get back to where I was? I have gotten to the point that I don't even follow the commenter's links.

Just get rid of the line that says "on return jump to bottom of page". It can't be that hard.

[and don't tell me to buy a Big Screen Android. As soon as I do that, everyone else in the damn house will be all over me like white on rice to get them a new toy, too]

Big Bill: nope, can't be done. The site uses the old Blogger template system, because its three column structure cannot be migrated to the new. Much more likely is, one day Blogger removes the support altogether and we'll no longer have a Vox Popoli. It could just suddenly happen.

cailcorishev:Of the Linux distros I tried;Ubuntu: There was always something that bothered me about it, but if I had to recommend something to replace Windows that would be it.My 'puter because of the fact that it is 'pieced together' (CPU, motherboard, HD) crashed hard when I tried to change the OS, both Unbuntu and Win 7. It both allows and won't recognize a rewrite to the 'boot block'.I was able to recover a working Win XP from the D: 'recovery' partition.On this 'puter any change of OS is likely impossible.I won't go through that again.When I replace this I will likely do a dual boot of some form of Linux and Windows (it's like 'flash' there are some things that only windows can do (Pale Moon under wine? and some games).For those who say open source software sucks, it was because Firefox was 'open source' that it was able to become what it was.If Firefox was not 'open source' it would not have become what it was.''Open source'' is ''stone soup'' that is what built Firefox and allowed Pale Moon to exist.

I'm actually pretty annoyed by the patronizing tone of these ReinstallFirefox people. How dare they assume that I wasn't sufficiently aware of that information about the nature of Eich's departure from Mozilla when I made the decision to join the boycott.

The whole thing is as arrogant and condescending as the people who drove Eich out of his job, honestly.

> Ubuntu: There was always something that bothered me about it, but if I had to recommend something to replace Windows that would be it.

I'd recommend Linux Mint. It's based on Ubuntu, but is better for most people.

> It does seem to have an issue with reading PDFs in the browser

Pale Moon doesn't have a built-in PDF viewer (see http://www.palemoon.org/technical.shtml for the details), so it uses whatever your system PDF viewer is (Adobe Reader for most people). If it's not working, it's probably a problem with the viewer installation.

> There are millions of bits and pieces like that out there, all created A) just for the heck of it, or B) to give something back.

Much more common than either is to demonstrate your technical chops, if you don't have entire projects you can take public credit for. In my little corner of iOS programming, I'd say a good third of the job postings I see these days don't even ask for a resume, they just ask for your Github account.

Pale Moon doesn't have a built-in PDF viewer (see http://www.palemoon.org/technical.shtml for the details), so it uses whatever your system PDF viewer is (Adobe Reader for most people). If it's not working, it's probably a problem with the viewer installation.

Yes, they've deliberately disabled the ability, meaning your system has to open a separate program for it. To me, that's an obvious issue with reading PDFs in the browser.

Markku: I saw that in the ''change to Pale Moon'' thread. I know I can change to Pale Moon in ''Linux''.Believe it or not, people in the USA might not have the money to replace their computer.I want Nokia to be successful, if nothing else, to keep my Nokia phone working.

> Now if there was just a replacement for Flash...Shumway, Mozilla's work in progress Flash reader, is now a part of Firefox. The Pale Moon developers disabled PDF.js, the Mozilla PDF reader, but didn't remove it. If Shumway becomes good enough a future version of Pale Moon will be a replacement for Flash (unless the Pale Moon developers decide to remove it completely).

Open Source is sort of like the music industry circa 1990. Tons of people beavering away in their spare time, trying to get noticed, while they pay the bills waiting tables. A small handful hit it big as far as money goes, the rest get by with pats on the back. And then you have some promoter putting together the latest Boy Band...

At the very beginning of this comment thread, Leatherwing said everything that needs to be said in response to this appeal: Mozilla was conspicuously silent when they had the opportunity to defend Mr Eich's right to his own opinions. They could and should have affirmed their strong commitment to keep politics out of the workplace, but it's too late for that now.

I didn't care enough to bother uninstalling Firefox; it's worked well for me for years. Then I read this "appeal," and now I'm browsing with Pale Moon. What a smarmy, insulting, condescending, mendacious piece of sophistry.

"Eich left of his own free will, and there was nothing political about it. If you don't believe us, it's because you're a fanatic who won't listen to evidence. You have a moral and epistemological obligation to grant us a 'good faith presumption of truthfulness' on this."

Gee, thanks for reaching out to me like that and addressing my concerns, Mozilla.

> Believe it or not, people in the USA might not have the money to replace their computer.

Believe it or not, I know that YIH. However, if they have any money at all, there are options. See www.piapc.com for one example of what's out there. I just wish they sold more machines with no OS loaded. Some of those older machines they sell aren't going to give acceptable performance with Windows 7, but would work find with some version of Linux.

Please note that if your opposition is based entirely on Mozilla’s position on same sex marriage; Microsoft, Apple, and Google all favor it more strongly than Mozilla. Mozilla has at least taken the position that while they do offer same sex benefits to employees, they are not involved in advocacy for that position and do not ask employees or contributors to agree with that. Microsoft, Apple, and Google all engage in direct advocacy for same sex marriage. Since one of the biggest things right now is marketshare, using a browser derived from one of the major browsers will still effectively support the parent. Of course, using Windows or Mac operating systems will also support an avowed supporter of "LGBT equality" and same sex marriage. In that case I would suggest Konqueror on Linux. Honestly, I would sincerely support that. I’m a strong proponent of Linux (personally, I’m running Debian) and Konqueror is a good open source project, albeit a minor player in terms of browsers these days (in spite of being the great-granddaddy of Safari, Chrome, and the new Opera).

It is noteworthy that of the people I've seen talking about uninstalling Firefox, probably 90% or better are under a false impression that Mozilla fired Brendan or forced him to resign and that they discriminate against Christians and/or conservatives. There have been a lot of false reports in the media and these people deserve to know the truth.

I’m glad you have at least evaluated the evidence, even if you made a different decision from mine. I agree with you on the issue of marriage but I still feel that I can support Mozilla’s work on the open Web without compromising my convictions.

I’m actually interested in seeing some stats on the magnitude of both protests. But be wary of using stats from your own site, though. It’s like an echo chamber, it will be highly skewed because you tend to attract more readers who agree with you than disagree.

> ...if your opposition is based entirely on Mozilla’s position on same sex marriage ...

It's not.

> ...using a browser derived from one of the major browsers will still effectively support the parent.

No, it won't. You obviously have no idea how open source works.

> ...of the people I've seen talking about uninstalling Firefox, probably 90% or better are under a false impression that Mozilla fired Brendan or forced him to resign

Mistaken? Sure it is. And the moon is made of green cheese.

> ...but I still feel that I can support Mozilla’s work on the open Web without compromising my convictions.

Good for you. We don't agree.

> ... It’s like an echo chamber...

Yeah, so we've been told b a lot of people just dropping by to complain about one thing or another. Maybe you'd like to check out the official Mozilla input page? https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/?date_start=2014-03-18&selected=30d

a false impression that Mozilla fired Brendan or forced him to resign...

Come on. Everyone knows how this works; stop pretending to be so gullible.

This is like a woman who cheats on her husband, files false abuse accusations and has him arrested, tells all their friends he has VD, teaches his kids to hate him, and moves in with her mother for six months, and then tells everyone the divorce was his idea because he filed the papers.

Please note that if your opposition is based entirely on Mozilla’s position on same sex marriage;

It's not. It's the fact that they apologized for having taken so long to get rid of Eich. And for us, there's only your condescending bullshit. By this, they have explicitly chosen a side. The other players haven't done it YET.

What I mean is, they publicly chose a side AS A COMPANY, with an official company statement. This is worse than some large majority of INDIVIDUALS in a company supporting same-sex marriage. The latter is only a concern that the former is likely to happen some time in the near future, but the damage isn't actually done at that point.

Regarding Pale Moon, you should realize that nobody gets money just because you use it. If you really like it, you should donate http://www.palemoon.org/donations.shtml. With regard to marketshare, browser stats will probably still recognize it as a Mozilla browser and it will give Mozilla leverage to influence the development of web standards and which technologies are employed by live sites. You may or may not care about that, but there it is. It is also worth noting that if Firefox is discontinued, Pale Moon will also probably cease to be developed. Pale Moon is a single developer producing a slightly tweaked version of Firefox; the majority of the development driving Pale Moon is coming from Mozilla. That said, I’m not opposed to anyone using Pale Moon if they like it.

Don't worry, blue. Vox already had a helpful post about how to change a setting in Pale Moon so it won't be recognized as Firefox.

Anyway, why do you think Eich resigned? You say it's a misconception that he was "forced out." That's true for some definitions of "forced," sure. I imagine he was very strongly encouraged by the board to "do the right thing" and resign. I also imagine that it was strongly implied that if he didn't go willingly, he would be forced out. I can't prove that, no, but come on. What do you suppose happened instead?

Interesting how so many commenters have shown that there is still misinformation by directly disputing the facts acknowledged by the article here. Some specifically stated that their opposition to Mozilla was NOT due to the reasons given in the article but precisely because of the things this articled acknowledged not to be true. They may or may not be open to reconsidering the facts, and they may or may not change their position when they realize they have had the facts wrong, but they have clearly based their opposition on false premises.

Even if you change Pale Moon to not report itself as Firefox, it will still be recognized by most stats as a Mozilla-based browser. You could more thoroughly disguise it, but that will be a bit more complicated (You could manually change the user-agent string and do some tweaking so that it identifies itself differently in JavaScript as well).

Please note that if your opposition is based entirely on Mozilla’s position on same sex marriage; Microsoft, Apple, and Google all favor it more strongly than Mozilla.

And which of those companies have tracked the voting records of employees in order to force out those who have "voted wrong" in the past, made a public spectacle of it, and made doing so official company policy?

So far only 'Mozilla.

Unless you work for an explicitly political organization, there's a longstanding social contract in the US that your voting record is your own business. We used to not fire people for exercising fundamental civil rights as enshrined in the Constitution.

Even if you change Pale Moon to not report itself as Firefox, it will still be recognized by most stats as a Mozilla-based browser.

No it won't (not that that's relevant). All graphical browsers I'm familiar with, including IE, Chrome/Chromium, and qupzilla (not to mention some scripts I've written), have Mozilla in the user-agent string. That indicates basic compatibility with certain features, not that they're "Mozilla-based."

Look, you're not the first person to come along and try to convince us that we're wasting our time and don't know what we're doing, while pretending you don't really care. Obviously you do have a dog in this fight, so you'd be more persuasive if you'd just go ahead and admit it and be honest about why you want people to stick with Firefox.

With regards to positions on same-sex marriage, Microsoft (Internet Explorer), Google (Chrome), and Apple (Safari) all have stronger stances favoring same sex marriage than Mozilla. In addition to having explicitly stated policies, they all spend corporate funds directly advocating for same sex marriage. Mozilla has taken the stance that this does not pertain to their core mission, so they do not require employees or community members to agree and they do not engage in advocacy for same sex marriage. Instead, they are committed solely to the open Web.

Mitchell Baker and others at Mozilla knew about Brendan’s Proposition 8 donation at least since 2012. She acknowledged this here: https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2014/03/26/building-a-global-diverse-inclusive-mozilla-project-addressing-controversy/ They supported Brendan as CEO in spite of that knowledge. Mitchell never said they were not fast enough to get rid of Brendan, she said they were not fast enough to “engage with people once the controversy started.” In fact, you will note she never ceded that Brendan was a bad choice for CEO or that he needed to be removed. They have actually gone out of the way to state that they would not fire someone based on their personal views.

As a matter of fact, I voted *in favor* of the legal recognition of same-sex marriages here in Washington state. I approve of loving commitment wherever it occurs. (I recognize, however, that what many if not most gays have in mind probably isn't the sort of lifelong commitment I would approve. Instead it's probably something more like the serial monogamy all too many heterosexuals practice. I.e., I support marriage, but not divorce -- by which I mean the modern no-fault variety.)

But I can't stomach the sort of "activism" that consists of shouting down any and all opponents, or the kind of witch-hunt that seeks to drive those opponents out of their jobs and into impoverished obscurity. I see no reason to support companies that cave so quickly under that kind of pressure. So I also uninstalled Mozilla in response to the shabby way they treated Mr. Eich and the mealy-mouthed excuses they're making now that the damage is done.

I'm aware that “Mozilla” in the user agent string does not indicate an actual Mozilla-based browser. However, when most sources compile stats on browser usage, they recognize that Iceweasel, IceCat, Pale Moon, Comodo IceDragon, etc are based on Mozilla and this will be taken into account when developers are considering what features, formats, and standards are most widely supported. I've been pretty clear as to why I support Mozilla and encourage others to do the same. But honestly, if you are running Pale Moon, whether in compatibility mode or not, you are still supporting them in what I think is probably one of the most important ways. That’s not some kind of ploy to trick you into thinking it’s futile and going back to “real” Firefox, that’s really just me being honest.

I've only seen one source of web stats with a wide sampling that has the granularity and currency to address how the recent protest and counter protest have affected market share so far: http://clicky.com/marketshare/global/web-browsers/ (Pale Moon without compatibility mode will be under “Mozilla” rather than “Firefox”.)

I've been pretty clear as to why I support Mozilla and encourage others to do the same.

No, first you pretended you were supporting Konqueror. Remember that? You can scroll up if you forgot.

But honestly, if you are running Pale Moon, whether in compatibility mode or not, you are still supporting them in what I think is probably one of the most important ways.

Then you should stop objecting and be happy about that. (When someone spends a lot of words trying to convince me not to do something that he also says doesn't matter, I start looking for the scam.) But you're wrong. Using Pale Moon "supports" Mozilla in one sense: Pale Moon can only exist if Firefox exists, so if PM is popular, FF will be encouraged to continue. But that doesn't get Mozilla any funding. Mozilla can die or dump FF off to some separate foundation, and FF can go right on without them. That's what you guys who are too dense to get the point (or pretending to be) keep missing: this isn't about FF; it's about Mozilla; but refusing to use FF is the way most people can kick Mozilla in the shins.

No, first I researched the issues, made several postings on social media explaining why I still supported Mozilla and clarifying some of the things commonly being misreported, got tired of typing so much of the same things and created http://www.reinstallfirefox.com. In reply to this article (which was itself replying to my arguments), acknowledging that Mozilla didn’t fire Brendan or ask him to resign but positioning opposition to Mozilla based on their support of same sex marriage, I suggested that if you really want to avoid supporting any of the big tech companies that support same sex marriage (such as Microsoft, Google, and Apple), you should consider using Konqueror on Linux. And I most certainly do support that option. As stated I’m a big proponent of Linux and Konqueror is a good project, too. By using Konqueror, you would be contributing to a more diverse browser population (where as swapping to one of the other major browsers you risk giving too much power to one of the companies already near the top) and encouraging developers to build sites to standards, rather than supporting certain popular browsers. There is no reason I can’t support more than one option.

Have you read James J. Heaney's rely to it? I assume you have, because it's linked on your page. Heaney writes:

"The problem is that your assurance is not a very strong authority outside Mozilla’s walls, and it has to be weighed against the evidence. This certainly looked, from the outside, like a standard corporate decapitation, where the Board decided to fire the CEO and allowed the CEO to “resign” only to retain his own dignity.

We saw Brendan promising never to resign just a couple days before he did. We watched Robert George predict — to all appearances accurately — how this was going to play out. We heard the dead silence from the principal players. (Why hasn’t Brendan said a word in defense of Mozilla since he left?) We noticed that all other accounts of his resignation say the Board tried to retain Brendan as CTO — but pointedly not as CEO. Above all, we read Mitchell’s (very unfortunate) blog post on Resignation Day. In that post, she seemed to concede that Brendan never should have been hired, that “equality” trumps free speech in this case, and that Mozilla’s biggest takeaway from all this is that, given the chance to do it all again, they’d have fired Brendan even faster.

In this light, your anonymous sources are just not very convincing, even given your bona fides as Mozilla’s last public marriage traditionalist. "

He makes good points. Does Heaney's failure to find Markham's claims persuasive mean he is misinformed, or a closed-minded fanatic incapable of acknowledging evidence?

> Regarding Pale Moon, you should realize that nobody gets money just because you use it.

Yeah. We know how open source works. Unlike you, apparently.

> ...browser stats will probably still recognize it as a Mozilla browser

Along with almost every browser out there, including IE, which was (like Netscape/Mozilla) based on the original Mosaic source.

> With regards to positions on same-sex marriage, Microsoft (Internet Explorer), Google (Chrome), and Apple (Safari) all have stronger stances favoring same sex marriage than Mozilla.

And how many of them have "asked" their CEO to leave because of a political donation?

> In addition to having explicitly stated policies, they all spend corporate funds directly advocating for same sex marriage. Mozilla has taken the stance that this does not pertain to their core mission, so they do not require employees or community members to agree and they do not engage in advocacy for same sex marriage. Instead, they are committed solely to the open Web.

Then why isn't Eich still their CEO and what were they apologizing for?

> They have actually gone out of the way to state that they would not fire someone based on their personal views.

Then why isn't Eich still their CEO?

> But honestly, if you are running Pale Moon, whether in compatibility mode or not, you are still supporting them in what I think is probably one of the most important ways.

I'm sure you think so, yes. We don't agree.

> ...that’s really just me being honest.

Somehow I doubt that.

> Using Pale Moon "supports" Mozilla in one sense: Pale Moon can only exist if Firefox exists.

Actually, even that's not true. As long as the source code is available (which by license it has to be), the Pale Moon developer can go his own way if he wants. He isn't dependent on Mozilla for anything unless he chooses to be.

> acknowledging that Mozilla didn’t fire Brendan

I acknowledge that Eich resigned. I don't acknowledge that Mozilla would not have fired him if he hadn't.

Just to clarify why I would explain how using Pale Moon might still support Firefox, when I should just be happy that you are still using a Mozilla-based browser, it’s because I’m not a deceptive or manipulative kind of person, I’m this guy: https://xkcd.com/386/

Again, don’t be confused by the term “Mozilla” in the user agent string, that has nothing to do with whether a browser is actually built on Mozilla technology. But it is a known fact that Iceweasel, IceCat, Pale Moon, and Comodo IceDragon are actually built on Mozilla technology and share similar capabilities. So if a browser identifies as one of these, it will probably be classified as a Mozilla-based browser for most browser usage stats, just as Clicky does.

As for Konqueror, it is initially *nix-only and totally experimental on Windows and Mac. While I’m a big fan of Linux, I realize that only 1-2% are running it on the desktop, so Konqueror is not much of an option for the other 98%. Now, if you are avoiding supporting companies that have a stated policy in favor of same sex marriage, you will be ditching Microsoft and Apple operating systems anyway. Most Linux distributions make it easy to install Konqueror. And Konqueror is one of the few browsers that is not based on one of the major browsers from Microsoft, Apple, or Google. (Actually, Safari, Chrome, and now Opera are all historically derived from it, but it has diverged significantly from webkit/blink.) Personally, I have not gotten the kind of performance from Konqueror that I have from Firefox, at least in recent years. I don’t necessarily recommend it on pragmatic grounds. But standing on principle, it supports a more diverse browser ecosystem while allowing you not to lend support to any of the big players who have made statements in favor of same sex marriage. If that is the stand you want to take, I would fully support it.

However, it would be much wiser to speak of the principle of free speech, instead of "constitutional right" to free speech. I mean, that right doesn't exist in the US constitution just by a random coincidence. But rather, it exists for the same rationale as why it would always be preferable that both sides of a disagreement would not attempt to take revenge on the other just because of what he says about the issue.

So, yes, law is not being broken in these incidents. Rather, it is merely becoming obvious to the other party that the other is not ready to play according to the principle. Which means that the other should start fighting dirty too. If one is sporting and the other isn't, the former will lose, all other things being equal.

We HAVE to get the message through to our side, that it is past time to start fighting dirty.

Ironically, the modern, liberal understanding of the principle of free speech originated in the European wars of religion during the 1600's. By the time the treaties known as the Peace of Westphalia were signed, people were sick and tired of killing each other because of their differing beliefs. So they adopted the principles of free speech and religious tolerance as a kind of truce.

But it appears that today's "liberals" have decided to betray their origins, break the centuries-long truce, and resume open warfare against their enemies. As Markku says, it's well past the time we realized this and adjusted our own tactics accordingly.

Kauft nicht bei Linken!

(If the resonances of that phrase are too disturbing, perhaps you haven't yet fully realized exactly what it is that has been unleashed by these recent events.)

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